Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(102)

“Why are you hiding your sheep from her?” I asked.

Vanje, the mustache-wearing vampire, jerked his head toward me and growled.

Kocourek held up a hand. “These are not sheep, Mercedes. These are the last of our households. The people who served us well and faithfully—only to be turned into . . . what did you call them? Sheep. Mary’s people call them dobytek. Vieh. Cattle. We called them our friends.”

“Not all of them,” said Dagmar pragmatically. “We just gathered up the humans and brought them down here. Two of them are a couple of people Mary collected last week—and why are we telling this to a naked human who is interesting only because she is the wife of an American werewolf, Kocourek?”

“Because it is good to talk,” he said. “To remind ourselves of who we are, that we are no longer subservient to Mary. Because she is not a human—you must not have observed her change. She is a coyote shapeshifter. From America. And because I want her to answer our questions.”

It came again, the double strike against Mary’s magic, and this time the second strike lasted for a long time—ten or twenty seconds.

“That stings,” said Lars on a gasp when it let up.

“What do you want to know?” I asked. I wiped my nose on my wrist because I thought it was running, but it was blood not snot. Less embarrassing, maybe. But I would have rathered it was snot. Blood meant these attacks were causing damage. Mary’s bit of witchcraft must be drawing power from anyone who had magic inside her sphere of influence; otherwise, we wouldn’t all be feeling it—and the mundane humans not reacting at all.

“Coyotes are tricksters,” Lars said.

“That’s not a question,” I retorted. “But Coyote is a trickster.”

“You are a death walker?” he said, suddenly very interested. “One who has power over the dead.”

And that right there told me that this vampire from Prague knew as much about what I was as I did. Just like the golem had. I didn’t say anything. This was bad. This was very bad. Because if he said what I thought he was going to say, it might mean that someone besides Bonarata was behind my ending up unexpectedly in Prague.

“One of your kind came through here during the First World War,” Lars said.

“Don’t tell me.” I groaned. “His name was Gary Laughingdog.” My very much older half brother whom I had just met this past winter. Hadn’t he said he volunteered for the army in World War I?

“You know of him?” Kocourek said. “He caused a lot of trouble here, in this town. Afterward, he told me that it was a curse of his—to come and make havoc. He said he tried to leave things better than when he came, but he would not answer for the bloodshed, destruction, and mayhem that happened while he was here.”

I hate coincidences. I don’t really believe in them, less now than before I met Coyote. But what in the world made Coyote care about vampires in Prague? And why would he think I could do anything about them? Probably my being here was just a coincidence, and I was being paranoid.

“She can command the dead?” asked Lars. “Can she command us?”

“Can you?” asked Kocourek.

I suppose I could have lied. But being raised by werewolves meant I’d never made lying a habit. “I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe. Sometimes. No.” I shrugged.

“Gary Laughingdog could,” Kocourek said.

“Scary bastard,” said Vanje. “I was glad he went back to fighting Germans.”

“So what did you bring down on Mary’s head, Mercedes who walks with the dead?” Kocourek asked.

And then I knew what Coyote might find interesting about Prague, and it wasn’t the vampires.

Before I had to work up an answer for Kocourek, the upstairs door blew open, and Mary turned on the lights.

“Kocourek,” she said. And then she said some other things in another language—stuff that was obviously orders.

I didn’t think she’d gotten notice that Kocourek wasn’t hers to order anymore.

“She wants to know where our humans are,” Kocourek said. “She needs to feed her witchcraft with them so she can withstand the monster at our gates. What did you bring down upon us, Mercy?”

“It’s the golem,” I told him.

He froze and turned back to me. “The golem?”

“The golem?” asked Dagmar. “Didn’t Gary say something about the golem? He was always saying odd things.” She frowned, then her face cleared. “I’ve got it. He said the golem wasn’t dead, and someone should do something about that.”

Lars said, “And he was sure glad his name wasn’t someone because that was going to be a messy job.”

“I remember the golem,” said Vanje thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that was a good choice, Mercedes Hauptman. It took the good rabbi four days of work to put that thing down—and the rabbi was never the same afterward.”

Mary said something sharply.

“She wants us to quit speaking English,” said Lars. “I don’t know about the golem—I wasn’t here when the golem was active. But I think someone needs to do something about Mary. And I’m willing to be someone today. How about you?”

Kocourek said something to Mary in a conciliatory voice.